Robots Have No Tails

Introduction

In 1942, when four of these stories were written, under the name of Lewis Padgett, Henry Kuttner and I had been married for two years and were more or less commuting between New York, where our publishing contacts were, and Laguna Beach in California where — so to speak — our hearts were. We loved Laguna, and all that quiet and blue water and clear, clean air. (Remember?)

In later years we worked more and more closely together on almost everything we wrote, and I was rather astounded on rereading the Gallegher stories to realize that not a word of any of them is mine. So I can say without immodesty that I think they’re very fine, very funny, very sane in a nutty kind of way. Also I am impressed, on reading them all together for the first time, by what seems to me a kind of lucidity which I attribute to the fact that I had no hand in them. (My own style tends to get rather murky now and then.) The only part I played in their creation was to hang impatiently over Hank’s typewriter and snatch the pages as they rolled out, enjoying each one and waiting eagerly to snatch at the next as it emerged.

I’m not sure now which of these Gallegher stories came first, though from internal evidence I think it was “Time Locker.” I’d like to know, because somewhere along the editorial line somebody (possibly us) altered the name of the lead character. In the first story he was called Galloway. Then we packed up and drove to the other coast, and when Hank wrote the second story he had forgotten this and called the character Gallegher. He eventually got around this very neatly by explain that the man was, of course, Galloway Gallegher. Which sounds rather like the logic of Gallegher himself.

Actually, Hank and Gallegher had a lot in common. Among other likenesses, they both rejoiced in a kind of lunatic, inverted logic and a quiet, contented bewilderment about the world and its workings. Gallegher, of course, went a lot farther than Hank in that department. But in many ways he was a self-portrait of his author.

For a while, as I reread this book, I was trying to find something profound in the contrasts between Gallegher and Gallegher Plus, who emerged only when Gallegher was drunk, and performed scientific miracles of which Gallegher sober was totally incapable. But on closer examination I think there were no contrasts at all. Both are utterly ruthless and amoral. Gallegher Plus, drunk but brilliant, will do anything for money, no matter what terrible dealings this lands Gallegher sober in. And Gallegher sober, constantly harried by the resulting financial and legal pressures, is forced into wildly ruthless strategies to get out of the current dilemma as fast as possible.

There is perhaps some justification for thinking of Joe, the vain, transparent robot, as an aspect of the two Galleghers. Possibly the three represent in a way one complete, brilliant, innocently ruthless person split into Joe the Id, Gallegher Plus the Ego and Gallegher sober the Superego.

In fact, the innocent ruthlessness runs like a motif all through the stories. Joe the robot remarks impersonally at one point, “I like blood. It’s a primary color.” And the rabbity little

Lybblas in “The World Is Mine” discover a corpse which when they found it was “Dead, but warm. That was nice.” They sat on him a while until he got cold.

Ruthlessness was not a characteristic of Gallegher’s creator. But a part of Hank’s vision, when confronted with scientific terms, is pure Gallegher. It gives me much pleasure to note that at one point Gallegher finds the company name of Adrenals, Inc., evoking “a mad picture…of building tiny prefabricated houses on top of kidneys,” and mention of positrons means simply “a gang of little boys with fishtails and green whiskers.” (Should I remind you of Poseidon the sea-god?) And in another, non-Gallegher story a character feels the synapses in his brain operating like tiny shutters which slide up and down with faint crashes, while through them the beady little eyes of neurons peep and their agile, spidery forms can be seen scuttling for cover.

(I once asked a neighbor in the apartment above us if she was disturbed by our typewriters going at all hours, and she said no, the only sound she ever heard from our place was me bursting into laughter several times a day. I was a most appreciative audience.)

I believe “Gallegher Plus” was the last of these stories written in 1942, just before Hank entered the army. The fifth, “Ex Machina” was published in 1948, just after the war. I wish there had been many more of them. There probably would have been. The unwritten ones must be regarded as minor war casualties.

So here are all the Gallegher stories there are. And if you wonder about this title, here is how it happened. A case could probably be made for robots and tales, but the fact is that when a publisher asked Hank for a title for this collection, Hank had already had to come up with so many titles that he gave up in despair. “I can’t think of one,” he said. “Call it anything you like. Call it Robots Have No Tails if you want to.”

And they did. I hope you enjoy it. I certainly did.

C. L. Moore

1952